The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (2)

Orquídea had carried her house with her for so long—in her heart, in her pockets, in her suitcase, and when it couldn’t fit, in her thoughts. She carried that house in the search for a place with a pulse of magic to anchor it.

In total, Orquídea and her second husband had journeyed for 4,898 miles, give or take a few. Some by carriage, some by ship, some by rail, and the last twenty solidly on foot. By the time she was done traveling, the wanderlust in her veins had dried up. Eventually she’d have children and grandchildren, and she’d see the rest of the world on the glossy postcards that covered the entire refrigerator. Like some, for her one pilgrimage was enough. She didn’t need to measure her worth by collecting passport stamps and learning half a dozen languages. Those were dreams for a girl left behind, one who had seen the pitch-black of the seamless sea and who had once stood at the center of the world. She’d lived a hundred lives in different ways, but no one—not her five husbands or her descendants—really knew her. Not in the way you can know someone, down to their bones, down to the secrets that can only be augured in bloody guts.

What was there to know?

Five foot one. Brown skin. Black hair. Blackest eyes. Orquídea Montoya was untethered to the world by fate. The two most important moments of her life had been predetermined by the stars. First, her birth. And second, the day she stole her fortune.

Her birthplace was a small neighborhood in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. People think they know about misfortune and bad luck. But there was being unlucky—like when you tripped over your shoelaces or dropped a five-dollar bill in the subway or ran into your ex when you were wearing three-day-old sweatpants—then there was the kind of bad luck that Orquídea had. Bad luck woven into the birthmarks that dotted her shoulders and chest like constellations. Bad luck that felt like the petty vengeance of a long-forgotten god. Her mother, Isabela Montoya, had blamed her sin first and the stars second. The latter was true in more ways than one.



* * *



Orquídea was born during a time when the planets converged to create the singularly worst luck a person could ask for, a cosmic debt that was not her fault, and yet fate was coming to collect like a bookie. It was May 14, three minutes to midnight, when Orquídea chose to kick herself out of the womb before getting stuck halfway, as if she knew the world was not a safe place. Every nurse and doctor on shift rushed to help the lonely, young mother. At 12:02 a.m. on May 15, the baby was finally yanked out, half dead, with her umbilical cord wrapped around her little neck. The old nurse on shift remarked how the poor girl would lead an indecisive life—a foot here and the other there. Half present and half gone. Unfinished.

When she left Ecuador for good, she learned how to leave pieces of herself behind. Pieces that her descendants would one day try to collect to put her back together.

It took twenty years and two husbands, but Orquídea Divina made it to the United States. Despite having been born on a cosmic convergence of bad luck, Orquídea had discovered a loophole. But that’s to come later in her story.

This is about the woman and the house that had never been—until one day, they were undeniably there.



* * *



On their first morning in Four Rivers, Orquídea and her husband opened all the windows and doors. The house had been enchanted to anticipate all of their needs and provided them with the basics to get them started: bags of seeds, rice, flour, and salt, and a barrel of olive oil.

They’d need to plant right away. However, the ground surrounding the property was cracked, solid rock. Some locals said the fissures in the ground were so deep, you could drop a penny straight to hell. No matter how much it rained in Four Rivers, it was like the clouds purposely neglected the valley where their house now stood. But that didn’t matter. Orquídea was used to making something out of nothing. That was part of her bargain, her power.

The first thing she did was cover the floors in sea salt. She poured it between the floorboards, into the natural grooves and whorls in the wood. She crushed thyme, rosemary, rosehips, and dried lemon peels, scattering them into the mix. Then she swept it all out the front and back doors. It was magic she’d learned on her travels—a way to purify. She used the oil to restore the shine of the wood floors, and then to make the first breakfast she and her husband would have in their new home—fried eggs. She sprinkled fat crystals of salt over them, too, cooking the white edges until perfectly crisp, the yolks so bright they looked like twin suns. She could savor the promise of what was to come.

Decades later, before the end of her days, she would recall the taste of those eggs as if she’d just finished eating them.



* * *



The house at Four Rivers saw the birth of each one of Orquídea’s six children and five grandchildren—as well as the death of four husbands and one daughter. It was her protection from a world she didn’t know how to be a part of.

Once—and only once—did the neighbors arrive with shotguns and pitchforks trying to scare away the witch who lived in the center of the valley. After all, only magic could explain what Orquídea Divina Montoya had created.

Within their first month there, the dry bedrock had sprouted spindly grass. They grew in prepubescent patches at first, and then blanketed the earth. Orquídea had walked every inch of her property, singing and talking, sprinkling seeds, coaxing and daring them to take root. Then, the hills around them softened with wildflowers. The rain returned. It rained for days and then weeks, and when it stopped, there was a small lake behind the house. Animals returned to the area, too. Frogs leaped across mossy rocks and lily pads floating across the surface. Iridescent larvae hatched thousands of fish. Even deer wandered down from the hills to see what all the fuss was about.